Feature: Syrian refugee children face tough times as world marks Children's Day

Hussein Dandashi, a nine-year old Syrian refugee, was waiting outside a school in a poor district in Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli for pupils to finish their school day to play soccer with them.

"I work at a grocery store in the morning to help my family sustain living," Dandashi, who fled the devastated Tal Kalakh city near Syria's Homs, told Xinhua.

The school is run by an Islamic charity and has allowed Syrian children to use the ground to play in the afternoon, he explained.

As the International Children's Day is marked on the first day of June, tens of thousands of Syrian children in Lebanon are going through hard times as they are deprived of their education and were forced to join the labor market to earn their living.

About 75 percent of the children who are on the streets in Lebanon are Syrians, according to the latest statistics of the UNICEF and the World Labor Organization.

Many of the Syrians, who fled their homes to Lebanon and who are according to the UNHCR about 1.2 million, have settled in the northern and eastern regions of the country near the border with Syria. They have either rented modest rooms or apartments or are staying with relatives and friends.

In Rachaya al-Wadi, a south eastern city of Lebanon, Samer Aboul Hawa, a 10-year-old Syrian child, works in an agriculture products canning factory for a daily wage of five U.S. dollars.

Aboul Hawa, who lives in a randomly erected camp, told Xinhua that his father was killed during Aleppo shelling three years ago, and he is the only breadwinner for his mother and four younger brothers whom one of them is permanently disabled.

As for eight-year-old Walid al-Gholaibi, he told Xinhua that he and some of his fellow Syrian children spend their time begging in a popular market and he collects about 10 dollars a day.

Nine-year-old orphan boy Talal al-Dulaimi who was displaced from Idlib, said that he works in a chicken farm for a monthly wage of 200 dollars to "help my mother in our living."

"I had to drop out school, and because of the extremely expensive living costs in Lebanon, we are somehow rationalizing our daily food," he added.

About the health conditions of the Syrian refugee children, Dr. Kamel Mhanna, head of the "Amel Association," a charity that is involved in the care of the refugees, told Xinhua that "it is miserable and pitiful."

He said that medical teams from his association "tour regularly the refugee camps to offer medical help and provide drugs particularly those related to the treatment of pulmonary infections among the children."

The UNHCR's latest report pointed out that it was trying to confront the phenomena of children labor through a program that aims at improving the needs of the "street children" and providing them with a "social and psychological support." Endit